To all the men reading this:

If you identify with the reasons stated below, please listen. I’m saying this out of genuine concern for you as a human being: Go see a doctor. It’s neither normal nor healthy for your junk to hurt when you assume a normal sitting position (and I say this as someone who hates sitting, period). You might have cancer, or a particularly nasty STI. A few (very very small percentage) of you might actually have abnormally large reproductive organs which makes sitting (or maybe even standing) normally difficult. I feel for you — maybe consider surgical options?

March, in case you were unaware, is Women’s History Month. Los Angeles’ own, Bambu, leaks a song that takes a look at domestic violence from a personal perspective. The song speaks on his family history with violence in the home, as well as his own struggles with it, even touching on the normalcy of such violence against women in our own Hip Hop culture. For this one, DJ Phatrick stepped out from behind the turntables to produce, sampling Adele’s “Someone Like You.” A video is set to drop at the end of the month and the song will also be included on Bambu’s …Exact Change… re-release bonus EP, Short Changed, dropping on April 29, 2011 through Beatrock Music Label.

2. The Queen Is Dead…. an older song calling out sexism in the “conscious” and “progressive” elements…

Here’s some cultural context for you in an analysis of this new phenomenon of the “GFE” in prostitution:

[…]Dude, talk about buying someone heart and soul.

Then of course there’s the entitlement aspect. The men who engage in such a thing not only believe that it’s right and appropriate to buy away a woman’s loathing of them and that she should act like she likes it, but they also believe that they, for whatever reason, have a right to a relationship. They have a right to buy another human being, use it, discard it, and she should pretend that she enjoys it.

A great introduction to and reposting of an equally-great article in Latina Magazine, embedded ironically amongst adverts featuring toothpick-skinny white models and french-sounding perfumes.

Let’s call it the intersection of racism and sexism, via immigration. I fully and whole-heartedly support this blogger’s message to “these people condemning refugees,” amounting to a resounding

fuck you for every asylee you want to send home. These people need help, and you are sending them back to hell and, in many cases, certain death. I am not exaggerating to make you feel guilty — this is truth, and I hope you never have to live in the same terror these people do[…]

I will leave the story as to why there was even a copy of Latina Magazine in my house in the first place for another day…

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. However, according to sociologist Dr. Evan Stark, the term “domestic violence” is a bit of a misnomer: Up until they try to leave, abuse survivors experience “coercive control” — a spectrum of instrumental violence consisting of intimidation, isolation, and physical abuse meant to maintain an abuser’s power. Thus, the abuse survivors experience is not necessarily domestic, nor is it physically violent. As such, abuse survivors often face three difficult options: Stay with the abuser and live in terror, try to leave and risk serious harm, or try to neutralize their abuser.

Toward the end of last year, several women and children in the Portland-metro area tried to leave their abusers behind. As a result, their abusers murdered them. Under the lead of the Portland Women’s Crisis Line, the community responded with a vigil. During this month of October, 2010, my thoughts turn back to my experience at that vigil last year…

As horrific as these murders are, an abuser’s final homicidal tendencies are just the tip of the iceberg of what abuse survivors experience daily in our communities. They live their lives in an atrocious terror that is completely preventable, and their murders are flash points, like lightning on a stormy horizon. The storm of violence will continue to surge in our communities and terrorize our loved ones if we keep ignoring the warning signs and their underlying causes. When will we commit ourselves to acting as a community?